THE EUROPEAN MASTER IN OFFICIAL STATISTICS
Bálint Menyhért
In his EMOS webinar, Bálint Menyhért gave insights into the topic:
"The ABSPO project – Measuring and monitoring absolute poverty in Europe"
The main focus of the webinar was on:
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EU policy context and ABSPO project overview
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Absolute poverty measurement - concepts, data, strategies & procedures & methodologies
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New ABSPO poverty estimates
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Contextualisation, validation, forward-looking considerations
Bálint Menyhért is an empirical economist interested in applied micro- and macroeconomics, labour markets, social policy analysis and the economic history of Central and Eastern Europe. He currently works as a research economist at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy. His main activities focus on socio-economic resilience, poverty measurement and the social effects of rising inflation. The ABSPO research project he coordinated produced the first set of cross-country comparable absolute poverty lines across the European Union. Bálint holds a PhD from the Central European University and has previous work experience from the OECD, the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority, and the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston & New York.
Contact: balint.menyhert@ec.europa.eu
Personal webpage: Bálint Menyhért (google.com)
Webinar details
Webinar aims:
The webinar aims to give participants an overview of a recent pilot initiative - carried out by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission - on the measurement and monitoring of absolute poverty (ABSPO). Through the lens of this particular project, the webinar will discuss many of the central issues of poverty analysis in the European Union : the potential benefits of using absolute measures, the main methodological challenges and data requirements of international measurement, the potential measurement approaches and statistical techniques, as well as the the new insights afforded by ABSPO project on the size, distribution and composition of the European poor.
Webinar learning outcomes:
By the end of the webinar, participants will have a general understanding of
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the different concepts and approaches to poverty,
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the existing European data infrastructure at the service of poverty measurement,
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the main challenges associated with defining internationally comparable poverty metrics,
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different measurement approaches to quantifying needs-based poverty thresholds,
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the most widespread and policy-relevant measures of poverty,
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the empirical relationship between absolute poverty, relative poverty and material deprivation across the EU,
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the scope for future improvement in data and measurement,
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the various thematic poverty domains - from energy to transportation to affordable housing - where the presented methodologies may be effectively used in future research.
Prerequisites for the webinar:
Basic understanding of statistical methods and some familiarity with household survey data
Further readings and resources:
Atkinson, A. B. (2019): Measuring Poverty around the World, Princeton University Press.
Menyhért, B., Zs. Cseres-Gergely, V. Kvedaras, B. Mina, F. Pericoli and S. Zec (2021): Measuring and monitoring absolute poverty (ABSPO) – Final Report, Publications Office of the European Union.
Ravallion, M. (2016): The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement, and Policy, Oxford University Press.